Konoha - Hokage Tower - The Office
The heavy silence in the Hokage's office was distinctly different from the hushed reverence that usually accompanied the presence of the village's strongest kunoichi. This silence was suffocating, thick with the scent of old ink, stale tea, and the impending specter of administrative doom.
Alaric sat comfortably on the plush leather sofa opposite the Hokage's massive desk, his posture a study in relaxed confidence that stood in stark contrast to the grim reality laid out between them. To anyone else, he looked like a standard Konoha Jonin. But the way he commanded the space around him… the sheer, unbothered gravity of his existence… belied the uniform entirely.
He leaned forward slightly, resting his forearms on his knees as his striking blue eyes traced the intricate, courtly calligraphy sprawling across the unfurled scrolls on the coffee table.
"Thirty percent," Alaric stated, the number rolling off his tongue with a profound, chilling weight. He looked up from the parchment, meeting Tsunade's exhausted amber gaze. "That's a lot. The daimyo's not trimming the fat of the village with a cut like that. He's cutting straight into the bone."
"Yes," Tsunade nodded gravely, her voice lacking its usual fiery resonance. She reached up, pinching the bridge of her nose to stave off the migraine that had been building behind her eyes for the better part of a week. "That's significantly more than the percentage the Wind Country's Daimyo deducted from Sunagakure, and look at the absolute logistical chaos that caused them. With a thirty percent deficit..."
She dropped her hand, gesturing vaguely toward the towering mountains of paperwork threatening to swallow her desk whole.
"The hiring of new personnel will have to be completely frozen. There will be immediate, unavoidable delays or severe reductions in base pay for our active-duty Chunin and Jonin. I will have to issue a blanket suspension on all non-essential projects… that means no new training grounds, halting the hospital expansions, and scrapping the infrastructure repairs in the civilian sector."
Tsunade let out a bitter, self-deprecating sigh, the reality of her political impotence tasting like ash in her mouth. "Just to conserve our baseline resources, I would need to quietly pull active genin teams off low-paying D and C-rank missions, which entirely guts our communal goodwill and our foundational training structure."
Alaric listened intently, his expression remaining perfectly neutral as he reached into one of the specialized utility pouches on his flak jacket. He withdrew a single Heavenly Cigar… the gift from a cosmic entity that he treated with the casual reverence of a daily habit.
"No," Alaric countered smoothly, shaking his head as he placed the cigar between his lips. "That's just the short-term hemorrhage. You're looking at the symptoms, Tsunade, not the disease."
With a subtle, controlled pulse of his golden chakra, a tiny spark of fire danced at the tip of his index finger, igniting the premium tobacco perfectly. He took a slow, deliberate drag, the rich smoke curling lazily toward the ceiling.
"Within three to ten months, the fundamental morale of the village will completely collapse," Alaric continued, his voice adopting the cold, pragmatic cadence of an apex merchant dissecting a failing enterprise. "You can forget about flaunting your shiny new S-class shinobi like Haku to the world. A legendary reputation doesn't put rice in a hungry Genin's bowl. When the paychecks stop clearing, loyalty begins to fray."
He leaned back against the cushions, fixing Tsunade with a piercing stare that offered no comfort, only the brutal arithmetic of human nature.
"Some of the clanless or lower-ranked shinobi, desperate to feed their families, will inevitably start taking private bodyguard gigs from wealthy merchants inside the Fire Country. It's strictly illegal, yes, but impossible to police when your internal security forces are equally underfunded. Consequently, your border patrols will thin out to skeleton crews. And the moment that happens, you create a glaring, geographical hole for minor nations… and opportunists like Iwagakure… to stage small border skirmishes just to test Konoha's structural integrity."
For every word that left Alaric's mouth, Tsunade's mood soured further, her expression darkening into a stormy scowl. She knew he was right. Every agonizing projection he laid out was a logical inevitability.
"If it gets up to a year or more without rectification," Alaric pressed on, the glowing cherry of his cigar illuminating the sharp angles of his face, "Konoha will become noticeably, undeniably weaker on the world stage. Alliances will begin to sour. Why? Because foreign Kage will whisper behind closed doors that 'the strongest village in the world cannot even pay its own bills.' A military superpower without a treasury is just a very large, very well-armed target."
Alaric tapped the ash from his cigar into a pristine crystal tray, letting the final, most devastating consequence settle over the room.
"But the worst-case scenario doesn't come from the outside. It happens right here. Internal factions will rise. The elders, or even the major clan heads who suddenly find their political influence waning, will start questioning your leadership. Desperation breeds treason, Tsunade. They will try to circumvent the Hokage's office entirely, attempting to cut side deals with the Daimyo just to secure their own survival."
"..."
Tsunade sat in stony silence. Her hands were clasped tightly together on her desk, her knuckles stark white against her tanned skin.
"There are many more troublesome, interconnected variables to think about if the Daimyo actually enacts this decree," Alaric summarized, taking another smooth drag from his cigar. "The civilian side. The shinobi side. The geopolitical ripples. The internal politics. The sheer economic weirdness of deflation in a military state."
Seeing that the Godaime Hokage was utterly devoid of counterarguments, seemingly drowning in the bleak reality he had painted, Alaric sighed softly.
He stood up from the sofa, brushing an invisible speck of dust from his flak jacket. The casual, unhurried grace of his movements was a stark contrast to the apocalyptic scenario they had just discussed.
"I don't have a concrete, bulletproof solution for you as of this exact moment," Alaric admitted, walking slowly toward the center of the room. "The numbers on these scrolls only tell me what the Daimyo is threatening, not why he feels bold enough to threaten it. I need to go to the Fire Capital first. I need to see how the political currents are moving over there, evaluate his inner circle, and start dissecting the problem from the source."
"...I see," Tsunade replied, her voice heavy, sounding older than her artificially youthful appearance suggested.
Everything Alaric had outlined was flawlessly accurate; it wasn't fear-mongering or assumption, it was the cold, unyielding trajectory of a starved economy. She swallowed the bitter pill of her own pride, acknowledging that raw strength and legendary healing ninjutsu were utterly useless against a shattered ledger.
"You have a bank account registered in the Konoha central branch, correct?" Tsunade asked, reaching for a fresh requisition form. She kept her eyes on the paper, unwilling to show him the full extent of her desperation. "I'll have the financial sector wire you the three million Ryo down-payment by the end of the hour."
"Oh?"
The single syllable hung in the air, dripping with a sudden, razor-sharp amusement.
Alaric paused, a slow, incredibly arrogant smirk curving his lips. "I didn't actually accept the mission yet, did I?"
Tsunade's head snapped up, her pen halting mid-stroke. The temperature in the office seemed to plummet, her already foul mood dropping directly into the lowest, most volatile circles of hell.
"Ten million Ryo is not enough, Godaime-sama."
Hearing the sudden, sarcastically formal honorific injected at the end of his statement, Tsunade's amber eyes narrowed into dangerous, glowing slits. She stared at the towering blonde man, her mind flashing back to the explicit, weary warning her sensei had given her when she first took the hat.
'Alaric Kenway is not a man of charity, Tsunade. He is an anomaly of power, yes, but he is fundamentally a merchant of consequence. His services are exceptionally expensive.'
"You are rejecting ten million Ryo?" Tsunade's voice was dangerously quiet, a tremor of restrained fury vibrating in her tone. "That is the payout for an entire campaign, Alaric. What could you possibly demand that exceeds the treasury's premium rate?"
"I don't need the ten million. You can keep the village's coin to plug the immediate leaks," Alaric replied, shaking his head. He took a leisurely drag from his cigar, raising his free hand and extending two fingers. "I only want two things from this office. Just two signatures."
He lowered one finger. "First: Unrestricted travel clearance. No checkpoints, no border interrogations, no mission time limits. I move where I want, when I want."
He lowered the second finger, his blue eyes gleaming with the predatory light of a capitalist visionary. "Second: Tax Relief for a soon-to-be-established business operating within the borders of the Fire Country."
Tsunade stared at him. She didn't shout. She didn't slam her fist into the desk and shatter the mahogany into splinters. She simply sat there, her brilliant, tactical mind rapidly calculating the long-term implications of what the blonde man was demanding.
He was asking for absolute, unmonitored autonomy and a fiscal loophole in a village that thrived on strict surveillance and taxation.
"No need to think about it for long, Tsunade," Alaric smiled, a charming, utterly lethal expression as he exhaled a thin stream of smoke. "Don't look at it as a loss. Look at it as an investment. I am saving this village from complete economic devastation, after all."
Tsunade continued to glare at him, her jaw tight enough to crack stone. She weighed her pride against the survival of her people. She weighed the abstract danger of an unregulated Alaric Kenway against the very real, immediate threat of the Daimyo's budget cuts.
She let out a long, shuddering sigh of pure, unfiltered resignation.
"Fine," Tsunade relented, the fight draining from her shoulders. "No one in Konoha possesses the actual capability to contain you or track your movements anyway. Have it your way regarding the travel clearance."
She picked up her pen, her gaze hardening into something resembling her usual stubbornness. "However, regarding the tax relief... I cannot grant you carte blanche. The civilian council would riot. I can only grant it for a maximum of three years. Whatever business empire you are plotting to unleash upon my village, you will be taxed at a flat rate of five percent for that duration. After the three years expire, you return to the standard commercial brackets. That is my final offer."
"Five percent..." Alaric mused, raising a single, contemplative brow. He sensed the deep, volatile undercurrent of her emotions beginning to rile up, the legendary temper of the Slug Princess threatening to break its cage. He chuckled softly, knowing exactly when to stop pushing. "I was hoping for a lifetime exemption, to be honest. But three years? That will do nicely."
Tsunade gave a curt, almost imperceptible nod of her head. She reached to the side of her desk, retrieving a blank, high-security scroll reserved only for the most sensitive village operations. She grabbed her calligraphy brush, dipped it deeply into the dark ink, and began to write with swift, aggressive strokes.
She detailed the parameters of the operation, the granting of absolute authority to the operative, and applied the specialized chakra-laced wax to seal it. She blew gently on the ink, allowing it to dry for a second, before picking up the scroll.
With a sharp, fluid motion, she threw the heavy cylinder across the room at the blonde Jonin.
"This is an S-rank, highly classified mission," Tsunade declared, her voice regaining its iron-clad authority as the commander of the Leaf. "The details of this arrangement, and your specific objective, stay strictly between us. Your mission starts now, Kenway. Travel to the Fire Capital ASAP and fix this mess."
Alaric didn't flinch as the scroll sailed toward his face. He simply reached up with his free hand, snatching the wooden cylinder out of the air with effortless, blinding speed.
He tucked the scroll neatly into one of the utility pouches on his flak jacket, his signature smirk returning in full force.
"Got it."
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